Essays in Anarchism and Religion

A Reflection on Mystical Anarchism in the Works of Gustav Landauer^211

or consciousness (Voegelin),^59 constituting for both thinkers the
most primary reality which generates knowledge before any inter-
mediary, such as politics, could interfere with its experience. For
Voegelin, to break the illusion of imaginative second reality was
possible because,

There is no imaginative oblivion without remembrance...There is,

furthermore, no remembrance or oblivion without the existential

consciousness to which the acts in reflective distance pertain. And

finally, there is no existential consciousness without the reality in

which it is conscious of occurring...^60

In other words, reality can merely be hidden through oblivion, but
it cannot be destroyed. The nature of reality is such that the fact
of existence itself will arouse remembrance of it- usually when the
symbols of imaginative reality, e.g. the racist state, cease to have
meaning in the reality in which they occur, revealing the limits of
their doctrinal truths. Reality re-asserts itself by penetrating the
experience of being, for example through encounters or events
whose meaning transcends the logical and fathomable realm of
senses and reason, and, as unfathomable mystery, arouses “awe”
within consciousness. “The total being”, Voegelin wrote, “is an
apex of mind, animal and vegetative animation, inanimate matter.
Death, sleep, dream, illness, fear, ecstasy, mystical submersion to
God, spiritual self-involvement of meditation, all of which serve
as a vantage point for speculation.”^61 According to Voegelin mys-
tery, which raises questions about the “what for?”, “where from
and to?” and “why?” of existence, is a basic every day experience
of reality. Thus, he stated,

Man is not a self-created, autonomous being carrying the origin

and meaning of his existence within himself. He is not a divine

causa sui; from the experience of his life in precarious existence

within the limits of birth and death there rather arises the wonder-

ing question about the ultimate ground, the aitia or proto arche,

of all reality and specifically his own...this questioning is inherent

in man’s experience of himself at all times.^62

Landauer described this speculative moment and the awakening
of individual spirit in a similar way, especially in his philosophical